I’ve recently discovered another bonus of the Kindle–which I have been using now for well over a year: samples! Prior to having a Kindle, my book-buying behavior followed 2 possible pathways:
- Rush off to bookstore, browse for something that piqued my interest, and purchase on the hopes that I would like it. I rarely had the time to read the first few pages, let alone the first chapter in the bookstore.
- Order it online (usually via Amazon) and read it when it arrived.
In both cases, I sometimes found that a chapter or so into the book, it wasn’t what I expected, and had I known that, I would not have purchased it in the first place.
With my Kindle, I can download a sample of the book for free before buying the book. Usually, a sample is about the first 10% of the book, which is generally enough for me to decide whether I want to finish or give up. I cannot begin to emphasize how much money this has saved me. I’d say I give up on one of every 5 new books, and given the volume of books I go through, this adds up. And even though Kindle book prices tend to be cheaper than hardcovers, I am still saving myself a good deal of money by downloading the sample first.
And if I like what I am reading? Kindle makes it easy for me to order the full book when I reach the end of the sample.
Being able to sample books like this makes the online browsing experience a little more like walking through a brick-and-mortar bookstore, with the advantage that I can pull 20 books off the shelf, sample them at my leisure, and then discard or ignore the ones that don’t capture my interest, saving my a good deal of time, as well.
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I too love being able to sample and only buy the ones I like.
Just wish I could work out how to get the full book to start where the sample left off.
When you get into s sample being able to one click and buy it is brilliant but then takes 5 minutes to get to same point in the real book.